Thursday, December 9, 2010

Science, Religion and Technology

Science - understanding the nature (or universe)
Religion- understanding nature and teach human the good and bad
Technology - make human's life easy

Their is no doubt that religions' all time mission on teaching human the good and bad is successful though many wars (in medieval ages and after in Europe, Crusades etc. ) and some terrorist activities (at present) have direct relationships with religions. But religion was a crucial factor in civilization. One might argue that UN's "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/) can replace religion. But we've become civilized enough to prepare that 'universal whatever' as a result of religion. When talking about 'good and bad' ,all regions are similar. But the interesting part is religion's other objective 'understanding the nature' which overlaps with science.

Let's consider some concepts in religion

After life : All major religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) possess some sort of an after life. In Hinduism and Buddhism one can be born again as human or animal. There is also a little difference between two regions. But for this discussion we ignore that. In other two regions human will be born in heaven or hell (different words may used )

Neither proven nor disproved scientifically

God/s : All 3 other religions except Buddhism teach that universe is created, maintained by God. In Hinduism, it is quiet different from other two. However the important thing is,

Neither existence nor non-existence of God is scientifically proven.

Even Einstein had talked many times about God. (God doesn't play dice). In his 'The Grand Design', Hawkings has some other thoughts. There are many famous questions of God. "What is god ?" , "Where does he stay ?" etc.

In addition to after life and god, there are many other concepts as well. But the important thing to notice is incapability of science to prove or disprove the concepts in religion. Does it imply that human still need religion ?

Current trend seem to be the technology which doesn't have problems with religion. Technology is to make our life easier and it doesn't need to find answers to unnecessary (?) questions. It only concerns "How to get a thing done ?" (programming, networking etc.) But there will be a day that technology needs go deeper in understanding nature. We'll be able to find the answers of religion that day.